Play Your Way

After my youngest was playing with this toy, the gum ball machine, I realized how different my kids were when they played with it. I could remember taking pictures of the older two playing with this toy, but wasn't sure about the Ally, my third child. Luckily I had, and luckily it showed how she had played with it in the photographs!

So I had the story I knew I wanted to tell and the photos to support it, then it was how to put it together.

Ali Edwards' Story Stamp theme for one month was Play, which was perfect to use with my story. Next, I had to decide on a layout design and products. 

I decided to do a two page layout. I had too much stuff with four sets of photos, and journaling for each. I decided to block it, where each child got have a page.  

When looking for paper, I wanted to find a pattern that was multicolored and had bright colors that reminded me of the toy. I found a stripe in Shimelle's Box of Crayons project pad, but couldn't find any subtle tone on tone patterns that worked with my story. There is colored card stock included in the pad, so I found ones in that collection as well as another (Glitter Girl, maybe.) That matched the stripes in the patterned paper.

I don't tend to use colored card stock much any more, preferring more depth with patterns, but decided it was a good opportunity to create my own patterned paper with the Play themed Story Stamps from Ali Edwards.

This is what I created. 

I debated on whether to create a repeating pattern or make it random. I chose the repeating pattern, knowing I would most likely like the overall look better if it repeated. I also tested some of the paper out with some Distress Inks to find a good match to the color of papers that I had chosen.

Really love how it turned out. I felt a bit disappointed that so much of it got covered up! Will definitely be doing this technique again and will select a design that will give it more room to shine next time.

Here is the final layout!

For the title, I found a Thicker phrase from Shimelle, that said play and some old Simple Stories alphas to create the rest of the title.

The title rests on a die cut I created using a Tim Holtz Sizzix die.

Because I had so many dates on this page, the dates of each set of photos, I wanted to include what day I journaled this story. I used a new stamp set from Everyday Explorers National Scrapbook Day bundle to add that. I tucked it in above the two photos of my son. Seemed like the best fit for the layout.

Another element to this layout that I was excited about was the stamped and paper pieced gum ball machine. The stamp is from Lawn Fawn. I had loved the fact that the stamp set came will all kinds of different faces to give the gum balls, and had no real thought to using it in this way when I bought it.

It wound up being a perfect embellishment for this story! I stamped it multiple times on each of the color card stocks and cut the pieces out and pieced it together. I am not much of a stamp colorer, so this worked best for me. Later for an embellishment around my photos, I stamped more gum balls and scattered them around the page.

For each child, I die cut their names using some old alpha dies from Quickutz. I stamped the date the photo was taken under that. I debated on whether I should add their ages under that, but they were all between 9 months old and a year and wasn't sure how to add it without complicating my design.

I found a journaling card for each child and gave it a subtitle with how they played with the toy. My kids got a kick out of them when they saw me putting this layout together, loving to hear how they played with it and how that was different from the others.

In repeating elements of the first page, I added two more View Master Reels and some heart Thickers from the same pack as the play word.

Love how this turned out! Super fun layout to make and love the story that it tells! 

Thanks for stopping by to take a look!